Illinois steps up nursing home safety push

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said Wednesday that her office and local police are intensifying their efforts to protect nursing home residents by making unannounced visits and conducting broad safety checks at troubled facilities.

Criminal investigators and medical experts from the attorney general's office have joined Chicago police to examine nursing home records to uncover unregistered felons and sex offenders living there, said Madigan's deputy chief of staff Cara Smith. They are also interviewing residents and staff at facilities with histories of serious safety breaches, she said.

"The days of protection being provided in a reactive way and in the wake of tragedy needs to end," Smith said. "The regulatory system has proven itself incapable of having any rapid response to violations. ... The idea is to be out there in a very visible way."

At the same time, Gov. Pat Quinn's office is working to introduce a comprehensive package of nursing home safety-reform bills as early as next week.

The stepped-up efforts come a week after Quinn's Nursing Home Safety Task Force completed a 52-page plan to overhaul the state's troubled long-term care system and end Illinois' current reliance on nursing homes to house younger psychiatric patients, including more than 3,000 with felony records.

Gelder said he and his task force staff worked through the weekend with the Department of Public Health and other state agencies to craft the legislation. He also met recently with representatives of the state's largest nursing-home association as well as advocates for the mentally ill and the elderly, including the AARP.

State Sen. Heather Steans, a Democrat who has addressed safety issues at several large nursing homes in her Uptown-Edgewater district, on Tuesday was appointed chairwoman of a new five-member subcommittee on nursing home care.

More than a dozen preliminary nursing home safety bills have already been introduced by advocates and the industry.

Quinn's task force was formed in response to a Tribune investigation documenting rapes, attacks and murders at nursing homes that serve some of the state's poorest residents.

It has recommended improved screening of people admitted to nursing homes to identify those with violent criminal backgrounds or other red flags; higher standards for facilities that accept psychiatric patients, including improved training for staff and stiffer sanctions for safety breaches; and an ambitious plan to move thousands of mentally ill nursing home residents into smaller settings where they can get better treatment.

A representative of the nursing home industry expressed some reservations about the task force's proposed increase in fees and penalties on homes.

"The entire focus of the (task force's) report is definitely going in the right direction," said Terry Sullivan, regulatory director of the Health Care Council of Illinois, the state's largest nursing home trade association. But, Sullivan added, "I have yet to find any study that shows more penalties improve quality of care."

In a two-page letter to state officials issued Wednesday, Madigan said her agency will continue to conduct warrant sweeps and urged various state agencies to join in her effort to create a proactive, high-profile law-enforcement and regulatory presence in Illinois' 1,129 nursing facilities.

"We welcome the attorney general's participation," said Melaney Arnold, health department spokeswoman. "We are all going to have to work together."